It was the worst interview experience in my job search history. It happened last week, and I finally decided to write it down. Before I experience what's following, Square has been a great company and I really admire the company mission as well as the simplicity of their design solutions, which made me believed that working at Square was a dream job for me. I applied several positions online and got approached by the recruiter for one position in one of the product team. Since I have got an offer in hand, the recruiter agreed to expedited the process. And I talked to one of the designer on that product team, they followed up with giving me a design challenge. I submitted the design challenge and waited for the answer. However, after a long day wait, I received a rejection email from recruiter only after I asked for the decision. I followed up with the recruiter asking if that rejection applied to other positions since she told me the design challenge could be used for other positions. Almost towards the end of the second day, the recruiter asked me if I want to interview for a junior designer position opening on other two product teams. I said yes because I still believe that this a great company with high design bar and it will be good for my growth as a designer. The recruiter then scheduled an 5-hour onsite two day later. Therefore, I assumed that other design team has reviewed my portfolio and saw me as a potential candidate. On-site day. I took one day off and arrived at their SF office. It started with a portfolio review and design challenge review which were suggested by the recruiter. There were designers from two product team sitting in the room. I thought it went well though they had some questions regarding the product platforms. After the portfolio review, I talked to one of the design lead from one product team. And the conversation was more about getting to know my background and my design ethics. Next was the lunch with designers. Two designer showed up and took me to their cafe. I started to feel the awkward, because I can feel they didn't want to know more about me. We sit with a few designers who joined the table. During the 45min, they just kept talking about their own work and ignored me. I was already surprised by that. Even if they didn't like me, I was still a guest and that should not be the way they treated their guests. Now I think about that, maybe those designer already knew what will happen afterwards. Because after the uncomfortable lunch, the recruiter showed up and told me that they decided to move forward with other more experienced designer. They didn't want to waste my time and she was gonna walk me out. I was completed shocked. And I still remembered the face of the recruiter, she just couldn't wait for a second to kick me out of their office! I respect their decision since there can be a thousand of random reason that made them feel I was not a good fit. However, I was really disappointed on the whole process. I literally felt humiliated. And this situation could have avoided if the recruiter set up the phone interview with those two design team before bringing me on site. It was probably the first time for all those people who were in the portfolio review. And it was really rude and hash to stopped the interviews in the middle without explaining more. Secondly, their designers who went to lunch with me didn't even respect me as a visitor. I really wanted to join their conversation but all they talk was about their work. It was really isolating and disrespectful. I already felt that I was not sure if I wanted to work with them. It was a really bad and unpleasant experience to me. I followed up to ask about the detailed reason for why they turned me down. The recruiter said the interviewer thought there were some strategy gap in the project I presented. It sounded very lame to me since they just put all the responsibility of a product strategy only on the designer without trying to understand the decision making process and the stakeholders in the project. To me, this is very sad because a product is a result of a team work and lots of collaborative decisions we made together with all the stakeholders.

Typical design interview. phone calls design tests interview with each member of the team Call was mainly about background and what you're looking for in your next role. Why block?